


the next time around

by lyricalecho



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Boi Friendship, Flashback, Gen, Implied Child Abuse, post-episode 48
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 20:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8072308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricalecho/pseuds/lyricalecho
Summary: Long before his life starts taking the path of an adventurer, Magnus has a chance encounter.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i cant believe that when i started listening to this podcast in april there were TWO FICS here and now look at this. im just a drop in the world's most beautiful bucket. :') i mentioned them on tumblr already but shoutouts to ao3 users thebookishdark and meltokyo for enabling my relentless spiral into Podcast Heck, and to! everyone creating content for this fandom, for inspiring me every day. y'all are the coolest.
> 
> anyways. anyways. ep 48 was hell on earth. talk to me sometime abt these two being bros/moirails/unintentional foils for each other, except don't, bc i'll cry. here's a tiny flashback thing.

The thing about Ravensroost - one of a hundred thousand things that Magnus loved about it, and still does, remembering - was that it was notoriously treacherous for any form of transportation, but chock-full of people with a lot of goods to trade and a lot of inaccessible resources they'd have liked to trade them for. So they didn't get merchants coming through very often, even when Magnus was younger, back before the blockade; but when they did, every couple of months or so, it was a pretty spectacular affair. They were some of Magnus's favorite days of the year, usually, because Steven put all of his craftsmanship training on hold while he exchanged half a year's worth of work for a very impressive haul, and Magnus got to meet new people from places he'd never been and have them compliment his carpentry, which was nice. 

He remembers those days in crisp detail - remembers all the good days, from before - but there's one that still stands out to him, even now. 

That day, his most impressive offering was a jewelry box he'd been working on, an inlaid mahogany design on the lid, and he'd settled on showing it to a young woman selling an impressive array of woven silks out of the back of a cart. He could learn to sew enough to make a shawl for Julia, he thought; she always loved colors like those. They were halfway through haggling, Magnus feeling pretty proud of himself, when someone pushed gracelessly past him and rushed through the stalls, down a nearby alley. They were moving too fast for him to get a good look, but in his experience no one was ever in that much of a hurry unless they were stealing something or running from someone, neither of which Magnus could stand by and watch. 

"I'll be right back, I promise," he told the woman, and sprinted off in the direction where whoever it was had vanished. 

The Roost could be tricky to navigate, but a lot of its paths eventually converged to the same place, so it wasn't hard for Magnus to track the runner through the series of alleyways until he found him at a dead end, sitting against a wall and breathing hard. It was an elf kid, disheveled and blond and beanpole-skinny; he looked to be about fifteen, around Magnus's age if only half his size. Magnus couldn't recognize him as anyone he knew from town, and he had the slightly wild, mismatched look of a lot of the merchants who came through. He didn't look up. 

"...Hey," said Magnus finally, once he figured the kid had to know he was there by now. "I'm Magnus."

The kid looked sidelong up at him. "That's some fascinating intel, my dude," he said. "Definitely gonna file that one away for later, thanks."

There was a weird lilt to his voice - Magnus couldn't quite place if it was an accent or just, like, how he talked - and he still couldn't be sure which of his two theories was true, but even if it was the less favorable option he wasn't about to go running to the militia over a 15-year-old thief. 

"So what brings you all the way out here?" he continued, trying as hard as he could to keep his tone light. Steven had talked to him about shouting too much, about sounding aggressive even when he's being friendly, and it was a hard impulse to combat when he was curious, but he definitely didn't want to freak this kid out. 

"Oh, you know." The kid shrugged. "I just hate... capitalism. All that... money? No, money's good. I don't think I know what capitalism is."

"Me neither!" Magnus said, and cleared his throat. Volume. Right. "I don't know what most things are, though."

"...Join the club, then," the kid said, almost - almost - smiling. There was a noise in the distance, down another alley, and he started and whipped his head around to see if someone was coming, which was the first time Magnus was able to see the bruise, recent, forming along the side of his face. 

Magnus knew what taking a hit looked like - he'd taken more than enough of them, been told a lot of them were avoidable if he weren't so pigheaded about danger - and he knew you didn't end up huddled and on edge in an alleyway because of a fair fight. Or a fight at all - you couldn't really call it that if it was someone with power over you, someone you should be able to trust, someone who -

Rage was rushing white-hot under his skin long before his brain managed to draw the appropriate conclusions; he heard Steven's voice in his head reminding him to _calm down, Magnus, think things through_. 

"Is there someone - " he started, but anger choked the question. "Did something - " _Breathe_. He settled on the most important thing. "...Are you okay?"

"Peachy, my guy," the kid responded, sounding distant. The noise had faded, nothing else coming closer, but he stayed focused on the direction it came from, hands tightening on his knees. 

_Let me fight somebody, let me stop somebody, let me, let me -_ "Do you... need someplace to go?"

He stretched out a little. "I mean, yeah," he said, "pretty much always. That's kind of the area of my expertise, to be honest. Which, uh - on an unrelated note, would you happen to know if all of the merchants head the same direction on their way out of here?"

He ran through the small talk he'd made with nearly everybody who'd shown up. ( _Did one of them know what happened, was one of them the kind of person who would hurt a kid, god,_ focus - ) "Um. Most of them head south towards Neverwinter after this, I think, but a bunch of the gem traders usually go on to Goldcliff?"

"Goldcliff," he repeated, quietly, and tugged on the end of his hair. "...That could work." 

"You could just stay here," Magnus blurted, and the boy looked straight at him for the first time, startled like he didn't quite hear him right. "I mean, I don't know what your whole situation is, but it sounds like... it's maybe not that much fun? And Ravensroost is, it's a good place, it's got good people, there would definitely be someone here you could stay with, maybe Steven - here, come with me, we can go talk to him - "

"Let's, uh, slow down there a second, big guy," he said, Magnus already halfway turning down the alley so they could head back to town. "I appreciate the offer, but unless your friend is in desperate need of a cook I don't think I'd be much - "

"You cook?" Magnus said. "That's really cool, actually, I know that, um, Lisbet, who runs one of the inns, she's always looking for people to help out - " He looked back to the boy's face, guarded, that darkening bruise. " - but also you don't have to do anything if you don't want, you know that, right? You don't have to work to stay here, you could just. Stay."

He stared at Magnus for a long, quizzical moment. "...Huh," he said, and looked away again, and exhaled. "I could be a terrible person, you know. I could light small animals on fire for fun. I could be a murderer."

"You don't seem like one," said Magnus. 

He shifted a little, at that, rubbing the palm of his hand with his thumb. "...Listen," he said finally, "you're being real sweet, and I'm sure this whole folksy-charm thing is a hit with the ladies - "

He wouldn't know; he'd only ever tried with one, who teased him every time he tried to talk to her, still. He pictured her face and it took him a second to remember what was happening. "No, I - " he said. "That's, um - "

"Wow, so, that bad, huh?" said the kid, and then shrugged. "The point is: I appreciate the offer, but I shouldn't stay. It's not really how I do." He stood up, dusted himself off, tugged some of his hair back into place - the bruise remained. 

Magnus's hand twitched at his side: he tried to imagine himself, alone, no family, no Steven, no Ravensroost, and felt ill at it. "...I want to help you," he said, quietly. He knew he shouldn't push too far (he always did) but if he left and something awful happened to him and Magnus could have stopped it, then - then - 

"That's cute," the kid said. "I really do mean that, I'm touched, but. The open road calls, and I need to bounce." He tilted his head at Magnus. "You and I are never going to see each other again, so, you know. Good luck with your girl situation, I guess, and all of that."

Magnus caught the kid's sleeve as he pushed past him to leave, and he froze, and looked back at him, and - Magnus would say anything to anyone if it would stop them getting hurt, but all he had died in his throat at the look in the kid's eyes, distant and wary and determined. This was more than he could equip for, and nothing he could come up with was going to help; not the way he wanted it to. "...Take care of yourself," he said, finally, every word a last-ditch plea.

"...You too," the kid replied, like it was taking him a second to comprehend it, and Magnus let go, and he was gone. 

That day, with the boy, ended up being one of the last merchant days before Kalen declared the blockade. Magnus had hoped, before that, that he would see him again, scanned every caravan that came through as though something would have made him change his mind and come back to town; he still thought about him, almost every day, after trade came to a halt, out there somewhere where Magnus couldn't reach him, maybe safe, maybe okay. And then: he had a girl to woo, and a city to save, and less and less time to dwell on people he could have helped then instead of people he needed to help now. By the time the cooking show rolled into town, in the few months where everything was perfect, he hadn't thought about the boy in so long that nothing about this blond, aproned elf even called the memory to mind. (Though maybe that was the point, he thinks now, after he's realized - no connection to be drawn between this flamboyant, self-assured performer and a scared, injured kid in a back alley, no past except one that's dead and buried.) 

And then - and then. And then his whole world was on fire, and he didn't think about much of anything at all. 

It was much, much later that he figured it out, long after he'd met Taako in person, again; not until after the race, and the sash, and the tree, when the three of them were headed to Captain Bain's office and Taako was unusually silent in the back of the wagon. 

"Hey," said Magnus, taking hold of his sleeve, Taako jolting a little in surprise. "...You okay?"

"Peachy, my guy," Taako responded breezily, and there was something about it, and the far-off sound of his voice, that gave Magnus familiar pause. 

And - oh.

He can follow the steps easily now, that he knows where they are, the kid and the cook and the wizard that's now one of Magnus's best friends; and it aches a little, knowing the in-between, thinking about that boy he couldn't help, making a mistake and losing nearly everything, thinking about Taako, vibrant, powerful, unpredictable Taako, scared and aimless in a Ravensroost back alley. He wishes he could find himself back then, wishes he could say _don't you know who this is, don't you know he'll be your family one day, you have to do more for him_ \- but they know, now, about going back. They just get now. And now, despite all of it, Taako made it here, to him and Merle, and now, and here, Magnus can protect him. He will. 

He never asks if he remembers; part of him feels like Taako probably had too much going on in his life, back then, for the moment to have made the same impact on him as it did on Magnus, but who knows. Remembering it isn't what matters, now that they all have each other. They get so few second chances. He can be grateful for this one.


End file.
